106 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the traces of the cradle of the human race are, in my opinion, to 

 be sought, and possibly future discoveries may place upon a more 

 solid foundation the visionary structure that I have ventured to 

 erect. 



It may be thought that my hypothesis does not do justice to what 

 Sir Thomas Browne has so happily termed " that great antiquity, 

 America." I am, however, not here immediately concerned with 

 the important neolithic remains of all kinds with which this great 

 continent abounds. I am now confining myself to the question of 

 palaeolithic man and his origin, and in considering it I am not un- 

 mindful of the Trenton implements, though I must content myself 

 by saying that the " turtle-back " form is essentially different from 

 the majority of those on the wide dissemination of which I have 

 been speculating, and, moreover, as many here present are aware, 

 the circumstances of the finding of these American implements are 

 still under careful discussion. Leaving them out of the question for 

 the present, it may be thought worth while to carry our speculations 

 rather further, and to consider the relations in time between the 

 palaeolithic and the neolithic periods. We have seen that the stage 

 in human civilization denoted by the use of the ordinary forms of 

 palaeolithic implements must have extended over a vast period of 

 time if we have to allow for the migration of the primeval hunters 

 from their original home, wherever it may have been in Asia or 

 Africa, to the west of Europe, including Britain. We have seen 

 that during this migration the forms of the weapons and tools made 

 from siliceous stones had become, as it were, stereotyped, and, further, 

 that during the subsequent extended period implied by the erosion 

 of the valleys the modifications in the form of the implements and 

 the changes in the fauna associated with the men who used them 

 were but slight. At the close of the period during which the valleys 

 were being eroded comes that represented by the latest occupation 

 of the caves by palaeolithic man, when both in Britain and in the 

 south of France the reindeer was abundant; but among the stone 

 weapons and implements of that long troglodytic phase of man's 

 history not a single example with the edge sharpened by grinding 

 has as yet been found. All that can safely be said is that the larger 

 implements, as well as the larger mammals, had become scarcer, that 

 greater power in chipping flint had been attained, that the arts of 

 the engraver and the sculptor had considerably developed, and that 

 the use of the bow had probably been discovered. Directly we en- 

 counter the relics of the neolithic period, often, in the case of the 

 caves lately mentioned, separated from the earlier remains by a 

 thick layer of underlying stalagmite, we find flint hatchets polished 

 at the edge and on the surface, cutting at the broad and not at the 



